


Her Name Is Pride

by rizahawkaye



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Action, Drama & Romance, F/M, Forgiveness, Friendship, Goretober, Goretober 2018, Post-Canon, Post-Promised Day, homunculi shenanigans, homunculus au, pride!riza, the blood n gore is p mild i prOMISE, there's a bunch of royai pls join
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-03
Updated: 2018-11-05
Packaged: 2019-07-24 11:26:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 8,612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16174109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rizahawkaye/pseuds/rizahawkaye
Summary: The late Führer’s wife knelt down in the dusty street. She fussed with the collar of Selim’s shirt, checked the integrity of the belt around his narrow waist, before she said in a near-whisper: “He’s hearing voices, Mr. Elric. And they’re telling him to find a vessel.”





	1. Plasticity

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i was originally only going to post this on Tumblr for now and then edit it to post here later, but i realized that is a fool's dream. i'm entirely too busy for that. so here's the longfic i'm writing for Goretober over on Tumblr, i hope y'all enjoy it ! updates will come every few days, with the goal being to end the entire thing on October 31st. (also pls visit Kinschi over on Tumblr, she's collabbing with me on this fic and will be creating art for it as it progresses!)

_**Putian / May 27th** _

_**Alphonse Elric** _

_We’re going out there tomorrow, to Xiamen. General Mustang told me to write all that’s happened down so that if we get “obliterated” someone will know where we went and why. We have to leave at 0500 and I should be sleeping but I can’t. The hall light is on outside of my room and I can see the shadows of people pacing from the crack between my door and the floor and the anxiety is winding up inside of me like a spring. I’m afraid of what will happen when I let it loose._

_And if I’m being honest, I’m anticipating the worst, Brother. I wish you were here. I know I made it through the Promised Day and I know I have Lan Fan and May but… but this is a different kind of nightmare. We can’t punch this monster into submission. We can’t strip her stone away._

_She has to be deposited into something else and I’m not sure if I really even know how to do that yet. You told me, and Dr. Marcoh told me, but I feel as though I’m drowning and my head’s been clouded up with little air bubbles, ready to burst from my ears and nose. If I fail then Xing will kneel to a half-homunculus who wears the face of an Amestrian soldier. The general is trying hard not to pressure me but every time he looks at me he sees all the mistakes I made that led him here… and led her here too. I know it._

_I can’t blame him for it, Brother. I don’t know why I ever let Selim into the palace. I should have sent him and his mother away but I was curious, and I was mortified, and his mother had this look in her eyes that said_

**Beijing, Xing / May 21st**

**Alphonse Elric**

“Everything is all right, Mr. Elric.”

“I’m heavily inclined to believe you since you’ve come with clearance from Dr. Marcoh, Mrs. Bradley, but I’m afraid I can’t speak for the emperor.” Al looked over the lines of scribble again. He was able to make out most of the doctor’s sloppy scrawl, something about the Bradleys and help and alchemy.

He could feel May at his back, running her fingers along the fruit in a cart, pretending she cared little for the information being shared. She elbowed Al in the ribs gently, like an accidental bump, and he reiterated on her behalf: “Xing is in an odd place right now. The old emperor is dying, and the new emperor is toeing a line with his people where the friendliness with Amestris is concerned. He’s already got an Amestrian alchemist studying under his roof, and I’m not sure how he’d explain welcoming the late Führer’s wife into his palace as well.”

Mrs. Bradley smiled, the corners of her eyes pinching at the ends as she did. She put her hand on her son’s back, between his shoulders, and it traveled to rest at the back of his head and the nape of his neck. Al’s mother used to hold him like that, way back when.

“I don’t mean to press,” she said, and Al thought he saw her bottom lip quiver, “but the business I have at the palace is unofficially official, as per Führer Grumman’s request.” She leaned over the top of her son’s head, cupping a hand in a half-circle around her mouth, and spoke quietly. Al could hardly hear her over the chatter of the marketplace around him. “We were sent here to see you, Mr. Elric. And no place is safer for our discussion than the royal palace of the emperor.”

Selim Bradley paid no mind to his mother’s touch, or her hushed words. He peeled at the rhine to an orange, the whites of it gathering underneath his fingernails as juice ran down his forearms before dripping onto the rocky road below. He wriggled a piece free and sucked on it before bringing it fully into his mouth. Mrs. Bradley took his hands one at a time and began to dab at the sticky mess.

Al heard May sigh, and then she sidestepped to stand with him shoulder-to-shoulder.

“You say you have business,” she quipped, her little black-and-white cat perched on her shoulder, growling in her ear, “yet we have heard nothing of it.”

Mrs. Bradley continued with her ministrations, unbothered. Selim ate the orange around her cloth, a new streak of juice spilling over his chin as she wiped old ones away. “It is sensitive information, young miss. The Führer believed this matter would be more easily discussed in person than by letters or phone calls.”

“He didn’t think to give us warning? We should be told when Amestrian power is being sprung up on us.” May gestured to the men dressed in black coats encircling Mrs. Bradley and her son, the military police assigned to accompany her across the desert. Her words were sharp, but her tone was cordial.

Mrs. Bradley straightened. The sunlight cast dark shadows over her face, tracing the deep lines folded into her skin from years of wear. Her hair, Al realized, had silvered more in the last few years. It reflected light like a metal, white and nearly blinding. She pulled Selim into her side as he licked his fingers clean, running his tongue along the breaks between them.

Selim had to be nearing four now. His eyes, though still round, had begun to point at the ends. His hair hung low over his ears and face, like it hadn’t been cut in a while. His hands were puffy, lacking definition, and his cheeks stuck out like marshmallows. He peered at Al through a break in his hair, gaze gleaming.

The circles in the small boy’s forehead twisted ever so slightly, coiling and coiling over each other, and Al stiffened.

“Mrs. Bradley…” Al started, and May took hold of his arm in alarm, “how _is_  Selim?”

The late Führer’s wife knelt down in the dusty street. She fussed with the collar of Selim’s shirt, checked the integrity of the belt around his narrow waist, before she said in a near-whisper: “He’s hearing voices, Mr. Elric. And they’re telling him to find a vessel.”


	2. Neurogenesis

 

**Beijing, Xing/May 21st  
**

**Ling Yao**

Ling gripped the edge of his chair, knuckles whitening as more Amestrians filed into his throne room. He wouldn’t call himself an undiplomatic emperor, but he felt a shift in his guards when Mrs. Bradley shuffled in through the heavy double doors, tugging her small son behind her, and it was enough to compel him to consider closing his borders along the desert ring.

Lan Fan’s automail twitched at her side, indicating to her emperor that she felt something was amiss. And Ling felt it too. It was faint, like a dying fire, a heartbeat too slowed to listen to properly. But it was there, and it followed young Selim Bradley around like a shadow, like it were a part of him. The once-homunculus’ hand disappeared into the strong grip of his mother’s, like the four-year-old he was, and yet innocence did not radiate from him, but seep out like water from a cracked pipe - forced.

Ling stood. “Lan Fan, take the boy.”

Selim looked from his mother to the guards in his periphery. He shook her arm wildly, eyes widening. “No! Mama, no!”

Lan Fan stopped in her advancement. Mrs. Bradley took her son into her arms, cradled him against her side.

When the boy spoke, the life Ling had sensed flickered out.

“What could you possibly need with Selim?” Mrs. Bradley demanded. Her clothes were wind whipped and worn, frayed at the edges where the sandy winds had grazed them. She lifted her son to sit him on her hip. He wound his pudgy arms around her neck, buried his face there. The soles of his shoes were chipping off.

“Take them to get cleaned up.” Ling commanded to a few guards posted near the Bradley pair. He waved a hand and fell back onto his throne, rubbing at his temples. “We will discuss your business here momentarily, Mrs. Bradley.”

Ling’s skin crawled, like dozens of worms were squirming under his flesh, burrowing holes into his muscles. A shiver rode down his spine in a wave even as the strange presence left his throne room, hitching onto the back of the young Bradley boy.

_How could it possibly be…? After all of this…?_

He nearly jolted when Lan Fan returned to his side, a quiet and stoic figure, like a statue or a suit of armor.

Unless, of course, your idea of suits of armor included a fourteen-year-old Alphonse Elric.

The blonde alchemist padded into Ling’s throne room tentatively, like he’d need to cower from the emperor’s - his friend’s - frustration, which Ling didn’t pin on Al. He attributed the flutter of his heart to Selim, and the rock sinking into his gut to Führer Grumman, who he felt owed him more than a couple good excuses for sending him an ex-homunculus. He made a point to sigh loudly, stretching his legs out over the edge where his throne sat atop a concrete block.

“You bring me a pair of Bradleys, dear friend?”

He expected Al to cast his eyes downward, but instead his gold gaze was resolute, mirrored by May’s. Ling frowned.

“She says he’s hearing voices, Ling” Al said, and then his eyes swept the perimeter and Ling excused his leftover guards. When the room was clear save for the four old friends, Al continued: “He’s asking for a vessel.”

Lan Fan blanched. “A vessel? Is he a homunculus again? That little boy? I knew I felt something off about him, like that fat man and the shape-changer, only instead of a few thousand bodies writhing together it was a handful.”

Al looked on, stunned, mouth pinched into a thin line. May nodded. “I felt a bit of that too, out in the market. It was so subtle that I had a hard time discerning where it came from, him or the hundreds of people around us.”

Al peered down at her, blonde hair falling over his eyes. “You should have said something,” he insisted gently. The sun began to set behind the palace, soft yellow rays of light stained the marbled floors and pillars, casting long shadows over the walls. The sun’s heat against Ling’s back became maddening the longer he sat, shoulders hunched, hands wringing the robes in his lap.

Again, Lan Fan’s arm shifted.

“Al,” she said, voice shaky, “we should call Grumman. And in the meantime we should secure the

**_Putian/May 27th_ **

**_Alphonse Elric_ **

_Philosopher’s stone, yes?”_

_That was when I lost my senses, Brother. I remember we flew to the late emperor’s chambers where the stone was kept, and we found Selim there. He had his tiny hand around the stone. He looked like a monster, his eyes glowed red, and all around his feet it looked like the ground was slithering, like snakes were living in his shadow._

_May tried to subdue him with her alkahestry. He squeezed the stone and let go of a guttural scream, like someone was choking the life out of him. I was afraid for him for a second, just a small blip, and then the room went red. The alchemic reaction sparked over the space, up the walls, cracking the windows. In the sound of shattering glass I heard Mrs. Bradley cry out from somewhere far away, yelling, “Selim! Selim!”_

_I know I’ve told you, Brother, so it does not need to be repeated, not really. But the general wants everyone to read this, and to understand, so here it goes:_

_When the dust settled, when Lan Fan had evacuated Ling from the hall, when Selim’s mother silenced, I saw those red eyes light in the evening sun, Brother. Tendrils curled outward in the fading sunlight, and the half-homunculus hissed, “Bring me that woman… Bring me Riza Hawkeye.”_

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> art by my good friend, Kinschi! find her on Tumblr, Twitter, and/or Instagram


	3. Reorganization

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> school is wild right now but i am having a lot of fun writing bits and pieces of this on the elliptical every night, haha! i hope y'all are having fun too!

**Desert, Xiamen, Beijing/May 22nd  
**

**Roy Mustang**

The heat, though familiar, was suffocating.

Riza had a better time of it, her head wrapped as tightly as the guide’s in cloth, leaving only her amber eyes uncovered. Her camel went over the sandy earth steadily, with little slips or trips, whereas Roy’s kept jolting him this way and that with an uncoordinated gait that left him wondering if someone had given him an unusually large newborn by mistake. Riza had scoffed at that, telling him to quit his whining.

 _Easy for her to say_ , he thought.

It was midday before Roy saw much of anything besides the occasional rock and the striking whiteness of the sand dunes that surrounded him. The guide - a man named Bo - fanned his fingers and spread his arm in an arc, encompassing as best he could the broken arrays on the stones of a place that was once called Xerxes.

“The ruins,” he said, his voice muffled through the fabric over his mouth. “Alchemists seem especially entranced by these.”

Roy looked on and, with a great amount of effort, made out the pieces of an array, chopped into halves and quarters like chunks of meat. Vines grew in the cracks, spreading over the lines etched into the stone, hiding valuable parts of an ancient alchemical language. The sun beat hard overhead, and when the last of the ruins were out of sight, Roy pulled his coat over his head and face, worried that the sun would burn him.

Roy, Riza, and Bo made it into the inner ring of Xing by the time the sun had exploded into deep oranges and reds in the sky, setting silently on its country. The first city they trekked through was called Xiamen, Bo said, and it housed very little of Xing’s impressive population. It reminded Roy of Ishval. Except instead of domed stucco homes, Xiamen sported houses of brick and wood, with sloped roofs to allow sand to run off its edges. The people were dressed modestly, in robes and sandals, and they chattered on as they shuffled over sand and stone walkways to a well house, to the carts of stinking fish and softened fruits.

“I gather they live quite differently here than the people inside the city,” Roy thought aloud.

Bo cleared his throat. “Xiamen is our forgotten city, Mr. Mustang. It does not produce, and it does not contribute, so it is not given much. Many people choose not to live here for that reason, besides a few brave souls who might feel like they have been rooted to this place by family or tradition. And roots are hard to get out, Mr. Mustang, especially in the forever-shifting sands.

“Do not fret for them. They are not confined here, yet they choose to stay. Ignored or not.”

Riza was the first to dismount as they came up on the checkpoint in Beijing. She tended to her animal first, leading it to the water trough, smoothing the fur around its neck, and removing the clasps holding her luggage. Then she unwrapped her face and swiped at the sand that rested on the hills of her cheeks. She ran her fingers through her short hair, breathed deeply.

Roy slid clumsily off the side of his camel, wrapping his hands into the animal’s reins to keep himself from falling into the dirt. He removed his items from his ride when he was on the ground again, when he could feel the crunch of rocks beneath his feet, and joined Riza by the trough. He briefly considered cupping a bit of the water in his hands, and then watched as Riza’s camel slurped at its own slobber, floating in a film over the water’s surface.

“The palace is up that way,” Bo said. He was behind Roy and Riza, removing the saddle and his own myriad of items from his camel. He lifted his wrinkled, bony hand to point. “It is the building with the most lights. You cannot miss it.”

Roy lifted his luggage in one hand and Riza’s in the other. He walked with her up the steep hill that led to a steaming marketplace. Beef sizzled on hot rocks, smoke curled in the air, water was thrown on coals and heated up, splattering onto his boots as he walked by. People spoke in their native language all around him, the words being heard but not understood. Roy felt like he had been transported to a different world; a noisier, more colorful, more rich world. He cast a sideways glance at Riza.

The lights were dancing over her eyes. The shine from the moon made her hair look white, like the sands in the daylight. Shadows cut across her cheekbones, the space under her eyes. She kept her gaze pinned to the road ahead, her attention tunneled on the palace and what may be inside. Roy thought she looked quite beautiful despite the circumstances, despite what Al had told them. He had a mind to ask her about her nerves then, about whether she was worried, but didn’t want to drag her through the feelings if they weren’t already there.

Instead he leaned over and blew at the sand that had dusted her shoulders, and she eyed him, eyebrow quirked.

“What are you doing?”

“Helping,” he said, and smiled.

**_Putian, Xing/May 27th_ **

**_Alphonse Elric_ **

_They arrived late that night, on May 22nd. I was still in my room, huddled next to the nightstand where I had called them from the night before. I had helped May cage Selim Bradley in the late emperor’s chambers earlier that morning. We transmuted the walls and the crack under the door so that no light could go inside, just in case. Every now and then we heard Selim’s voice, sobbing, asking for his mother. But if we denied him or ignored him, the sobs would turn to snarls, and fingernails would scrape over the wood of the door. He would bang his fists on the walls._

_I can still hear the general’s voice from that night, bellowing in the throne room._

_“She’s not going in there!” he’d said it so quietly at first, but the sound of it was deadly, Brother. And the more Ling pressed, the louder the general got: “I don’t care what the Bradley boy wants!”_

_I remember the captain was so glad to see me. She always smiles so sweetly, doesn’t she, Brother? Like Mom used to. She gave me a hug and I helped her unpack her things while the general yelled at Ling and Ling yelled back. We moved around her room in silence, and when we finished I left to go back to Ling, and she stayed to change._

_I thought a lot that night about how nice it felt to have her around again._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if u haven't visited Kinschi on Tumblr, Twitter, or Instagram yet then i'd highly recommend doing so! not only for the art she'll do for this, but for all the FMA art she's done or ever will do. she is incredibly talented (and unbelievably kind)!


	4. Nociception

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello! i had to break for 1.5 weeks of midterms (i had hoped to avoid doing that but y'know) but i am back, and w the realization that i can't keep my dates and places right for this dang fic jankgjbfndjk i have since fixed that error, i hope no one but myself noticed lol

**Beijing, Xing / May 22nd**

**Riza Hawkeye**

Riza managed to smile against all odds. Her day had been long, the night before it had been longer, and the morning was fast approaching.

But that couldn’t be helped, she reasoned, and so she slipped out of her boots and slacks, the rough granules of sand itching over her skin as she did. She replaced them with a clean pair of loose-fitted pajama bottoms, the kind that tied around her waist and caught under her heel as she walked. She dropped her jacket onto the back of a chair that sat tucked into a vanity.

She was glad to see her skin hadn’t been burnt on her trek through the desert, though her eyelids were looking a bit more pink than usual. She turned the knob on the sink and caught a pool of cool water in her hands. It felt good to rid her face of old sweat and salt, and the soap she used smelled like lemon, which she appreciated.

Riza could hear Roy and Ling arguing from her place in the hall. She closed the bedroom door behind her quietly, so neither of them would be alerted to her arrival. She was miffed that they went back-and-forth on a solution to a problem that ultimately should be decided upon by her, the subject of the homunculus’ demands. And if she were being honest with herself she’d admit that Selim Bradley frightened her, and the prospect of seeing the boy and his deep black tendrils again was one she wished she didn’t have to face. So while Roy’s incessant protests against her venturing into the room with Selim were mildly annoying, she appreciated it all the same.

She came upon Selim Bradley’s door as she made her way back to the throne room, where Al had said he was going. The door and the walls surrounding it were scarred by alchemy.

Years ago, when Riza was a girl, Roy had accidentally shut off her father’s basement door while trying to repair the hinges. He had meant to thin the wood of the door so he could reach the hinges more easily, and instead he had gone a step too far and both sides of the door crept over the walls to seal the basement shut. Riza remembered giggling while he went frantically to his textbooks, trying to sort out a way to undo the damage before his master returned home from the library. She eventually helped him in his endeavor, reading with him until they found a promising passage.

Al’s door looked much the same as that one did, except the bottom of it touched the marbled floor beneath so light from the hall was blocked from entering the room.

“I know you’re there,” the boy called from the other side of the alchemized door. “I’ve been waiting for you, Lieutenant Hawkeye. It took me years but I finally remembered.”

Riza stood pinned in place by the familiarity of Selim’s voice. She shuddered as she thought back to the corridor outside the Bradley estate, the red eyes in the shadows. The cut set neatly into her cheek and the tendrils coiling around her body.

“Are you still a lieutenant? Perhaps not,” Selim went on, and his voice grew louder as he did. “It doesn’t matter. I need you, Riza Hawkeye. When Edward reduced me to a small minded child he thought he had finished me. But I left something inside of you, and it woke me. And I need it back.”

He began tapping on the door. Then, when Riza didn’t respond, he started to rake his nails over it.

“Edward Elric thought he had me,” Selim sounded like he was pressed up to the door now, speaking straight through it, “but I had been prepared. He is a fool.”

“Edward didn’t destroy your stone?” Riza queried. The will to speak was found somewhere deep inside of her, in some remote place where the rest of her bravery lived. Selim laughed once, a harsh, high-pitched sound.

“I thought he might kill me back then. But what he managed to do was force me to revert back to a primitive form, to this child. And as this body grew while I slept someone else’s consciousness grew with it - and this vessel is no longer mine. I fight for control over my own meager sliver of stone with a vile soul who comes from it!”

“The soul of Selim Bradley - that isn’t you?”

“No,” Selim - _Pride_ , Riza corrected - banged his fists on the door. “The child Mrs. Bradley knows is one from the stone. When I was dormant my body needed a soul and this one latched on like a leech.”

Riza swallowed thickly. “And what does this have to do with me?”

Pride was silent as though weighing his response for seconds that stretched on for what felt like hours. Then he sneered, “I left a piece of my stone inside of you the day I cut you, Hawkeye. I had meant what I said about you joining up with the homunculi. I had meant it enough to plan for you to become mine, in one way or another.” 

_**Putian, Xing / May 27th** _

_**Alphonse Elric** _

_Captain Hawkeye was troubled when she returned to the throne room. I thought maybe she had been frustrated with all the arguing, but she told the general and Ling quite plainly what had happened upstairs with Pride. I couldn’t believe it, Brother. A soul from the stone had stolen a homunculus’ body! I remember Ling being confused, saying, “Soul’s don’t retain their individuality inside the stone.”_

_But, Brother, when you removed Pride of his status on the Promised Day you removed a few of the souls remaining in his stone as well. I saw the validity of it immediately: a soul could figure itself out if the swarm quieted down, if a few other souls were omitted. Our dad helped the souls inside of his stone maintain their individuality much in the same way, by isolating them and talking with them_ _one at a time._

 _The captain told us about the piece of the stone Pride had left inside of her, and the general looked at her with sad eyes, Brother, like it was_ his _fault. She went on to detail a night before the Promised Day when Pride had assaulted her outside the Bradley mansion and left a mark on her cheek, but she made it clear that she never felt anything like a stone enter her, nor had she felt off since then._

_But that was when she collapsed to the floor, and started to convulse. Red light sprang out of her mouth when she opened it to scream, her arms twisted behind her back, her legs curled underneath her. I thought she was going to break into pieces, Brother. General Mustang tried to go to her, but Lan Fan held him back as he wailed and struggled in her grip._

_It was May that acted fast enough to end it. She managed to draw the circle around Captain Hawkeye as she writhed, and her transmutation quieted whatever it was that had been tearing the captain apart. Her eyes rolled into the back of her head, and high above us, echoing in the rounded room, we heard Pride laugh._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lemme mess w FMA lore. just lemme do it pls,


	5. Myelinopathy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i’m naming all of these chapters after things i read about for my neuroscience class lol “plasticity” is basically the brain’s ability to relearn; “neurogensis” is regeneration; “reorganization” is technically supposed to be “functional reorganization” and it’s the brain re-training itself after injury; “nociception” is the reception of pain; and “myelinopathy” is a loss of myelin, which is a protective sheath around axons that allows communication between neurons within the body. just, fun fact, in case anyone thought i was making words up, (i’m not clever enough for that)

**_Putian, Xing / May 27th  
_ **

**_Alphonse Elric_ **

_Captain Hawkeye slept for close to twenty-four hours after that. We don’t know why, but my guess is that whatever had happened to her - if it had for certain involved a piece of Pride - it had been too much for her body to handle. May said what she did was stop a transmutation, one coming from deep inside the captain’s body, by blocking its movements. She had essentially halted the deconstruction of Captain Hawkeye’s body and reconstructed it herself. The damage hadn’t been severe, but the captain came out of the ordeal with a fractured femur and splintered humerus. That is how hard her body writhed against the floor, Brother…_

_General Mustang spoke to Pride minutes after it had happened. He sprinted up to the halls and flung his fist into Pride’s door. I heard his knuckles crack against the wood from my place down below in the throne room._

_“PRIDE!” he roared._

_And that was all we could make out. From there the general had a conversation with the half-homunculus. We didn’t know anything about it until we carried the captain back to her room, and left her there for the doctor. General Mustang was seated in the hall cross-legged, his back against the wall, his fingers pressed into his eyes. Pride spoke to him from the other side of the door, his voice so low I had to dip my head down to listen._

_“…and a I cannot do that if I’m trapped in a bedroom, Mustang.”_

_That was all I caught of their talk, and the general refused to elaborate until the captain woke the next night._

**Beijing, Xing / May 23rd**

**Alphonse Elric**

Alphonse squeezed the captain’s hand, hoping she’d react. He tipped his head back when she didn’t and blew his bangs away from his face. Studying the bedroom ceiling was easier than watching Captain Hawkeye sleep. It was easier than waiting with bated breath for her chest to rise and fall and rise and fall - so slowly Al worried a number of times that her breathing had stopped. But then she’d inhaled long and deep and her breaths would come shallowly after that, her lungs waiting for the fated moment they’d be drowned in a mouthful of oxygen.

They had the captain’s leg propped up on a stack of hard sofa pillows. The general hadn’t let them take her into surgery or drill a rod through her thigh. The only reason they knew what had happened to her because May felt it during her transmutation, when she stopped the power exploding inside the captain.

Al shuddered. He didn’t like thinking back to the previous night. Captain Hawkeye had hit the floor with a sickening smack, like all of her bones had given underneath her weight and split into pieces at once. And she screamed, and her nails dragged over the marbled floor and left scuff marks, and now her leg and her arm were a gross mix of dark, navy blues and blacks stained at the edges by an angry red. Al reached forward and covered the exposed skin of the captain’s thigh with the thin sheet resting over her midsection. The sheet didn’t hide the bruising so much as mute its colors.

Al felt pressure on his hand and started.

“Captain Hawkeye?” he said, standing. The captain’s lashes fluttered and her eyes opened, and amber met gold. Al shouted out the bedroom door, “General Mustang! The captain is awake!”

“Al,” Captain Hawkeye rasped. Her throat sounded dry, rough as sandpaper. “I need to see Pride.”

Al’s gaze traveled down to Hawkeye’s ruined bones and then settled on her face. It was resolute, defiant; not asking for permission. But Al didn’t get a chance to answer her before the general skidded into the room, catching himself on the doorway. His dark eyes took the captain in, starting first at her femur, which he had elected to avoid looking at until now, and then up the curve of her broken arm to her face. She was still staring intently at Al.

“Captain Hawkeye?” he said, taking tentative steps in her direction. Finally Riza looked at him.

“I’m all right,” she told him, and Al. Then she hissed through her teeth as she shifted in her bed, gently pulling her hand from Al’s. “How long was I out, sir?”

The general’s expression edged toward anger, and then he righted it into the neutral expression of professionalism. Al noted that the two had a way of doing that, swallowing their emotions. “Twenty-two hours, Captain. You’ve got a fractured femur and humerus, so May Chang says. I’m inclined to believe her, and so I suspect that you should too. Don’t move around too much,” he instructed. Captain Hawkeye’s heated eyes met his.

“I spoke with Pride,” General Mustang went on. “He’s apparently using the stone in that room to call the piece he left in you back to him. What happened to you last night was a rebound or the response of your stone to his. He says he wants what’s his back.” The general’s hands curled into fists at his sides.

_And I cannot do that if I’m trapped in a bedroom, Mustang._

“Al,” Captain Hawkeye started carefully. Al turned slowly toward her. “If anyone here knows about the stone, it’s you.”

Al looked from captain to general, feeling very much like he was being sandwiched between two opposing forces, equally powerful and equally dedicated to their own cause: General Mustang to keeping Captain Hawkeye safe, and Captain Hawkeye to keeping General Mustang safe. He twisted the sheets of the captain’s bed nervously between his fingers.

“What are you asking me to do, Captain Hawkeye?”

**_Putian, Xing / May 27th_ **

**_Alphonse Elric_ **

_“Transmute his stone into mine.”_

_I balked. I’m pretty sure my mouth just hung open, like it had come unhinged. General Mustang became still and stern at my side, his dark eyes burning._

_I asked her how she knew she even had a stone, and she said she’d seen it. She said when she was on the floor in the throne room, she’d felt all the souls twisting around inside of her and there it was at her core, Brother. A small piece of a stone. I’ve always known Captain Hawkeye was brave, but this? She and Pride would need to be side-by-side and then…_

_Like you said, there was only a fraction of a chance. Pride could carry over._

_Captain Hawkeye could become a homunculus herself._

_We might never get the stone out without killing her._

_I knew all of these things, Brother, but I was stuck under those piercing eyes. And in the end, despite orders from the general and warnings from May, I took the captain to see Pride._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> kudos, comments, concerns, tell me about ur day, ur aspirations, ur dog,


	6. Spasticity

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> probably gonna write a chapter a day to finish by Halloween but tbh idc bc this is so much fun to write! it's also a great warm-up when i'm preparing to work on other projects bc i don't edit this, i just write it n go~

**Beijing, Xing / May 24th**

**Ling Yao**

Ling wandered out to the patio outside his chambers. The double doors slid away from one another easily, as if gliding over ice. He leaned his forearms over the thin, bronze railing and studied the lights - red and green and yellow - plotting the city of Beijing. He knew when he took the throne he’d be faced with angry, resentful citizens who still favored his father and an insurmountable list of tasks left behind by the old emperor. But he never imagined this.

Beijing was his home. He could close his eyes and remember clearly sneaking into the streets as the sun edged into the sky. The long shadows cut across arching rays of orange and yellow sunlight, creating ample space for Ling to tiptoe in and around patrons and food carts. He always left his home in the clothes he went to bed in the night before, his hair sticking up around his face from the way he’d laid while he slept. People eyed him dubiously. They bent over their carts of steaming buns and ripe fruit, thinking he was a thief. They clutched their coin bags to their chests and kept a firm eye on him from their periphery, scowling. It would have made Ling laugh if it weren’t the way real poor children were treated every morning, day after day.

He went into the city early in the day because it was the time he was allowed to be alone. Ling was caged when the grounds stirred with life, a prisoner to his studies and to his father’s wives and to his brothers. But Beijing offered him freedom, if for a small moment. Ling could be anyone he wanted in the city - anyone but himself, a prince. He held that knowledge close to him as a child, and he held it now too; a comfort.

And something sinister was threatening it.

He pushed off from the rail and went back to his room. He sat on the edge of his bed and fanned his fingers over the cool bedding, still pristine and undisturbed. He hadn’t fallen asleep yet tonight. He never tried to.

Captain Hawkeye had only been awake for a handful of hours, and the longer she was consciously aware of harboring a piece of a stone the louder the souls inside of her became. As far as Ling was concerned she was a homunculus herself - a pseudo-human dressed in royal blues and occupying a space in his palace. He would never dare to voice the opinion out loud unless he wanted to incite a war, or General Mustang’s wrath, which Ling was convinced could arguably be worse. He wasn’t sure his feelings were valid anyway. The captain was a likable, responsible person from what Ling could gather. Al was certainly attached. And it wasn’t like she ever intended to be a container for a piece of Pride. She never offered herself or made a conscious decision. She was violated, as the city of Beijing was.

Ling went to his washroom and flicked a lamp on overhead. He turned the knob on the sink and gathered water into his hands. It felt good to throw the water in his face, like he was momentarily washing away the souls that crept underneath his skin. Years ago, when he had shared his body with Greed, Ling had thought he’d get used to sensing the chaos of the stones. But the resurgence of Pride and the awakening of the stone within Captain Hawkeye had affected him greatly. His stomach ached and his ears rang and his jaw was always clenched, bringing headaches and peripheral pains.

Ling shut off the water. He went to dry his hands and stopped. Suddenly, like air had been sucked out of the world, the souls quieted. Ling waited, his hands floating above a washcloth. And then they crashed into him at once, coupled with a gut-wrenching, inconsolable scream.

**_Putian, Xing / May 27th_ **

**_Alphonse Elric_ **

_It made sense at the time, Brother. You know this and I know it._

_I helped Captain Hawkeye down the hall to the room we were keeping Pride in. She wanted to me to do the transmutation I wasn’t even sure was possible to do, so I didn’t. But I did lead her to Pride. I did do that._

_She has autonomy. Or, she had it. I didn’t want to be like the general or like Ling. How could any of us know the right move? That’s what I asked myself. This was Captain’s Hawkeye’s body, Captain Hawkeye’s stone, and everyone was making decisions for her like it was their body and their stone._

_So I took her to Pride. The one tiny thing I could do was give her that bit of agency, Brother. Pride practically purred on the other side of the door when I lowered the captain in front of it. The hall was so quiet - the entire palace was eerily silent - so every word from Pride was loud, assaulting. He said, “I knew you’d be drawn to me too.”_

_And then: “Let me fix those wounds.”_

_Red light erupted from the captain’s thigh and her arm. The sound sizzled away as quickly as it had come and the captain stood, her expression unreadable._

_“You’re afraid,” Pride said. Captain Hawkeye straightened. I heard Pride press his palm to the door, and the captain mimicked him. But her movements were jerky, Brother. Her arm was spastic and every centimeter her arm crept forward it looked as though she wanted to pull back._

_Sound dropped out of the world the moment her hand touched the door, taking the air with it. I recognized the transmutation at once but he had her before I could pull her back. She let loose a heart-stopping scream, one unlike any I had heard before. I dropped my hands on either side of her head and disintegrated the door. Pride was waiting on the other side, but it was the only way I could tear her free._

_It didn’t matter. Pride’s tendrils slithered along the floor as I wrapped the captain in my arms and spun her out of his line of sight. She was still screaming when he jerked me to the ground, sending her crashing into the marble. She was still screaming even as he lifted her above my head and ripped his way into her chest._

 


	7. Paresia

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "a chapter a day" ajbfhjbkdslnfdjb

**Beijing, Xing / May 24th  
**

**Roy Mustang**

Roy woke with his fingers still curled loosely around a warm glass of brandy. Something felt like it had pierced through his gut and his bones and the moment his head snapped up from his pillow he knew it was that scream. It tore out his insides and left him clutching at the side of the bed, his drink falling from his hand to clatter to the floor.

He fumbled out of bed and wrenched his bedroom door open. The air from the hall was spiked with alchemical energy - red and bright and angry. He followed it until he found the source: Captain Hawkeye, her body open to the cool nighttime air, her blood running off the tips of her fingers like water off a ledge. Roy’s mind tried to reconcile the woman in front of him with the adjutant he had come to Xing with but came up short, empty. The sight pinned him in place.

Riza was suspended over Al, whose body was drenched in her blood. Black tendrils were wrapped around her midsection, her throat and legs and arms. Al’s hands slammed over his ears and he touched his forehead to the floor, pressing his chest into it.

And Roy couldn’t take his eyes off his captain. The red of the stone lit up the red of her blood, which was pumping out of her thickly. It glistened over her face, over the crown of Al’s head where it trailed down his neck and into his shirt.

Riza’s body was a hotspot for a transmutation. Roy gathered that much. His palms met in front of him and he touched the wall to his right, planning to trap Pride in the room again and cut off his inky black tendrils. The homunculus was ready, however. A tendril shot out from the darkness and snaked around Roy’s calf, jerking him to the floor. The more the struggled the farther the tendril spread up and over his thighs, his chest, his throat. He was pinned against the cold, hard marble, watching helplessly as Riza’s stone was activated and deactivated; as her body was deconstructed and reconstructed. Repeatedly. Over and over.

“Al!” he yelled, but the sound was lost in Riza’s wails. “ALPHONSE!” Though he couldn’t possibly hear him, Al seemed to regain composure and sit up slightly, pulling his hands from his ears slowly like they were stuck in honey. Then he placed them together; then they touched the floor.

Pride had inched his way out of the room and into the hall, so when Al transmuted the door closed, he missed. The homunculus took Al then too, thrusting him into the farthest wall and pinning him there. It was only then that Roy noticed Ling and Lan Fan and May lined up neatly against the same wall, panting and struggling. He lay his head on the cool floor and thought, but nothing came. His gloves were packed away, his gun was left at the border, and his subordinate was not by his side. He felt naked, vulnerable, and useless.

He lifted his head in time to watch a ball of red roll along one of Pride’s tendrils. It went like a raindrop over a stalk, smooth and purposeful. And it was deposited into Riza’s open chest.

The tendrils fell apart the moment Riza’s chest closed over the stone. Pride crumpled to the floor like a doll, and Roy expected Riza to as well but she stood on her own, blood caked over her arms, a cut open and bleeding over her cheek. She looked thoughtful and calm, serene like she was sitting by a lake and watching its water ripple. Her feet touched the floor but made no sound.

“Captain Hawkeye?” Roy prompted. Riza’s gaze traveled to him lazily. He knew deep inside himself that this person was no longer Riza. He knew it even before she grinned at him, her smile lacking warmth or meaning. His heart plummeted.

“‘Captain Hawkeye?’” Riza’s voice shot back. She laughed but it was hollow and airy. “You saw the stone, didn’t you? You saw me put it here?” She thrust a bloodied thumb at her chest. Roy could only stare, gaping, his lower lip trembling. Was Riza gone? Did he lose? What had happened? Al had let himself slide to the floor. His tears were already flowing.

“So you’re Pride?” Ling ventured from his place by the wall. He rubbed at a red ring around his throat. Lan Fan clutched her automail arm at his side, and May rested a hand between Al’s shoulder blades. Her brows were knit together, her mouth pinched and eyes narrowed.

“Indeed,” Pride sounded mildly annoyed that Ling had spoken to her at all. “Although I’m not quite the same Pride I was in that boy’s body. I have my memories, but the inclusion of this new stone and vessel has breathed a different kind of life into me.”

Selim Bradley’s body lay in a heap. The boy seemed to have lost muscle tone; his cheeks were sunken in and the bones of his elbows looked sharp, pointed. Like a starving child. Roy felt guilty when he caught himself wishing Pride had never left that small body.

The homunculus looked right into Roy’s eyes when she said, “I prepped this vessel. And I’ll be taking it now.”

_**Putian, Xing / May 27th** _

_**Alphonse Elric** _

_I don’t like to think about this night. But Pride, she… She tried to kill us but something stopped her. Her tendrils were halted in midair, shaking with tension as she tried to propel them forward while something else pulled them back._

_And then, before any of us could react, she threw herself out a nearby window. She disappeared into the darkened grounds below the palace. Ling shouted for his guards to go after her, Lan Fan and May went with them, and I approached General Mustang…_

_But I had no words for him, Brother. I sort of stood over him and waited for him to say something, to react. Finally I told him we had to go, and he said, “Why was she in the hall, Alphonse?”_

_When I didn’t respond, he shouted: “How did Pride get to her, Alphonse!?”_

_He seemed very far away, Brother._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> s/o to Kinschi for the amazing art! i cry about how incredible she is.


	8. Tension

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry guys :( i traveled two weekends in a row and had a neuro exam somewhere in between that :( these are my writing warm-ups and i think i only need another four or so before this story is wrapped up. so hang in there with me!

**Beijing, Xing / May 24th**

**Riza Hawkeye**

Riza regained consciousness in the same way a drunk might: slowly, and with confusion. **  
**

She could see out of her eyes - an alley dusted with feral cats and stinking barrels of hot trash - and she could feel her breaths push and pull, but she couldn’t control her movements. The pressure beneath her feet told her she was walking over something squishy, something that squirted out from between her toes and stuck to the skin of her feet. It was wet and warm. The cool night time air rose gooseflesh over her arms and she smelled quite acutely the tangy iron of blood.

But she had no  _control_.

She struggled to remember where she was, what she was doing, why she couldn’t stop walking. Panic began to bite at the back of her throat like bile and dammit if she didn’t feel afraid. That feeling was one she kept to herself often, she held fear close to her heart like a precious secret but right now her mind surged with uncertainty. She couldn’t even turn her eyes to look for Roy or Alphonse, try as she might.

“Go back to sleep,” her voice pierced the otherwise quiet alley. “Assimilate.”

_I didn’t say that_ , Riza thought.  _So who did?_

Then: “You stupid woman. This body isn’t yours anymore.”

Though Riza was frightened by the statement, her heartbeat remained steady and rhythmic, like it didn’t belong to her. Flashes of red came to her in pieces, cracking like lightning in her mind; the door, her muscles contracting under her skin as she tried to resist Pride’s pull, the tear in her chest as tendrils ripped her open, snapped her sternum. And then darkness.

The monster inside her body hummed. “This must be how it was for Greed,” Pride mused. “I wonder how you’re able to retain a sense of self when those in the stone cannot.”

Riza stayed quiet. The city around them was beginning to chatter as they left the dark of the alley and emerged on a dusty, rock-laden road. Lanterns hung from curved iron polls stuck a couple of feet into the ground, illuminating the street and the storefronts that lined it. Pride looked to their right where smoke and steam from the markets curled into the air, and then to their left, where the light tunneled into darkness. Pride went that way, the rocks along the ground digging into the soles of their feet.

Riza kept up her silence, although it didn’t do much good. Her thoughts were her voice in the blood red expanse she woke in. She couldn’t necessarily see what swirled around her, but she felt it on her periphery; chaos and the cold hum of thousands of souls stuck circling within a vortex.

_I’m a homunculus._

Pride snorted. The sound was soft, low. “ _I’m_  a homunculus, and you are a parasite.”

_But this is my body._

“Not anymore.”

_Yet you haven’t gotten rid of me. Why?_

Pride halted. They toed the darkness ahead, a wide home for nothing discernible underneath the inky black sky. Not even the moonlight managed to live on this night.

“I need more souls,” Pride reported, almost as though the homunculus had only just figured it out. “We’re going to that town you traveled through with that general and your desert guide.”

_Xiamen._

“The forgotten city.”

**_Putian, Xing / May 27th_ **

**_Alphonse Elric_ **

_There was nothing I could do. There wasn’t even anything I could say._

_Ling sent orders out for a search party immediately; he ordered for his military’s involvement as well. The palace was overrun with guards and officials within minutes of Pride fleeing and Ling was forced to relay the bare bones to them: there was a homunculus here, and now he was an Amestrian soldier. His people’s eyes grew wide as he spoke, and slowly they narrowed in anger. I could feel the heat of it as easily as if I had been sitting in front of a fire._

_And, Brother, I may as well have been._

_General Mustang prickled with fury. I couldn’t tell at the time if it had been directed at me, but I knew some of it must have been. He leaned against the wall of the palace’s great hall, his eyes shut so tight and his brows furrowed into a single, scrunched up line across his forehead. He didn’t move or speak but he was terrifying, Brother. I kept checking for his gloves on his hands - holding my breath as I did - and was relieved when I could confirm they weren’t there._

_I remember one of Ling’s generals said, “So a homunculus is a collection of human souls? And we cannot kill it. Then what purpose does activating my men serve?” I assumed he was talking about using the military to hunt for Pride and Captain Hawkeye. By the look on General Mustang’s face, I could tell I was right._

_Ling explained (patiently, though he was visibly frustrated) that this homunculus may very well still be a home to an intact human soul. “We cannot kill her,” he’d said, “and we will not kill her.”_

_And then General Mustang lifted off the wall like being tugged forward on a rope. He crossed the distance to Ling’s left hand and said, “She’s still in there like you were when you shared your body with Greed.” I remembered how Pride had tried to kill us - how some unseen force had held the homunculus back. Ling’s eyes flicked nervously to the general standing nearest to him. “And Pride is still weak. He’ll take my captain’s continued existence as an affront on his being. He will go somewhere to devour more souls to attempt to stifle her._

_“He’ll go to Xiamen.”_

_Ling shifted uncomfortably in his seat. His fingers drummed over the arm rests. “Why Xiamen?” he asked, but I figured he knew the answer anyway._

_“It’s your forgotten city.”_


End file.
